A hybrid EDA for load balancing in multicast with network coding

Load balancing is one of the most important issues in the practical deployment of multicast with network coding. However, this issue has received little research attention. This paper studies how traffic load of network coding based multicast (NCM) is disseminated in a communications network, with load balancing considered as an important factor. To this end, a hybridized estimation of distribution algorithm (EDA) is proposed, where two novel schemes are integrated into the population based incremental learning (PBIL) framework to strike a balance between exploration and exploitation, thus enhance the efficiency of the stochastic search. The first scheme is a bi-probability-vector coevolution scheme, where two probability vectors (PVs) evolve independently with periodical individual migration. This scheme can diversify the population and improve the global exploration in the search. The second scheme is a local search heuristic. It is based on the problem-specific domain knowledge and improves the NCM transmission plan at the expense of additional computational time. The heuristic can be utilized either as a local search operator to enhance the local exploitation during the evolutionary process, or as a follow-up operator to improve the best-so-far solutions found after the evolution. Experimental results show the effectiveness of the proposed algorithms against a number of existing evolutionary algorithms

Recent Trends in Communication Networks

In recent years there has been many developments in communication technology. This has greatly enhanced the computing power of small handheld resource-constrained mobile devices. Different generations of communication technology have evolved. This had led to new research for communication of large volumes of data in different transmission media and the design of different communication protocols. Another direction of research concerns the secure and error-free communication between the sender and receiver despite the risk of the presence of an eavesdropper. For the communication requirement of a huge amount of multimedia streaming data, a lot of research has been carried out in the design of proper overlay networks. The book addresses new research techniques that have evolved to handle these challenges

A multi-hop routing protocol for an energy-efficient in wireless sensor network

The low-energy adaptive clustering hierarchy (LEACH) protocol has been developed to be implemented in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) systems such as healthcare and military systems. LEACH protocol depends on clustering the employed sensors and electing one cluster head (CH) for each cluster. The CH nodes are changed periodically to evenly distribute the energy load among sensors. Updating the CH node requires electing different CH and re-clustering sensors. This process consumes sensors’ energy due to sending and receiving many broadcast and unicast messages thus reduces the network lifetime, which is regarded as a significant issue in LEACH. This research develops a new approach based on modifying the LEACH protocol to minimize the need of updating the cluster head. The proposal aims to extend the WSN’s lifetime by maintaining the sensor nodes’ energy. The suggested approach has been evaluated and shown remarkable efficiency in comparison with basic LEACH protocol and not-clustered protocol in terms of extending network lifetime and reducing the required sent messages in the network reflected by 15%, and, in addition, reducing the need to reformatting the clusters frequently and saving network resources

Interference Exploitation via Symbol-Level Precoding: Overview, State-of-the-Art and Future Directions

Interference is traditionally viewed as a performance limiting factor in wireless communication systems, which is to be minimized or mitigated. Nevertheless, a recent line of work has shown that by manipulating the interfering signals such that they add up constructively at the receiver side, known interference can be made beneficial and further improve the system performance in a variety of wireless scenarios, achieved by symbol-level precoding (SLP). This paper aims to provide a tutorial on interference exploitation techniques from the perspective of precoding design in a multi-antenna wireless communication system, by beginning with the classification of constructive interference (CI) and destructive interference (DI). The definition for CI is presented and the corresponding mathematical characterization is formulated for popular modulation types, based on which optimization-based precoding techniques are discussed. In addition, the extension of CI precoding to other application scenarios as well as for hardware efficiency is also described. Proof-of-concept testbeds are demonstrated for the potential practical implementation of CI precoding, and finally a list of open problems and practical challenges are presented to inspire and motivate further research directions in this area

Secure and Energy-Efficient Communication in IoT/CPS

Secure and energy efficient routing protocol is fairly an open research despite a plethora of routing protocols has been proposed in the literature. However, most routing protocols specifically designed for resource constrained wireless devices, if not all, follow from the same perspective and almost have reached the maximum improvements. This chapter describes the design of cross-layer secure multi-hop zone routing protocol (MZRP) and a hybrid energy-efficient medium access control (MAC) featuring the benefits from both carrier sense multiple access (CSMA) and time-division multiple access (TDMA). MZRP employs the intelligent artificial neural network (ANN) self-organizing map (SOM) algorithm, which is performed at the coordinator or the base station (BS) to divide the area into multi-level zones. Then cluster heads (CHs) are chosen using k-medoids in each zone. The performance of MZRP is better in terms of energy efficiency compared to dual-hop and HT2HL as it extends the network lifetime using hybrid MAC and the security algorithm employed has less message update

On Multicast in Asynchronous Networks-on-Chip: Techniques, Architectures, and FPGA Implementation

In this era of exascale computing, conventional synchronous design techniques are facing unprecedented challenges. The consumer electronics market is replete with many-core systems in the range of 16 cores to thousands of cores on chip, integrating multi-billion transistors. However, with this ever increasing complexity, the traditional design approaches are facing key issues such as increasing chip power, process variability, aging, thermal problems, and scalability. An alternative paradigm that has gained significant interest in the last decade is asynchronous design. Asynchronous designs have several potential advantages: they are naturally energy proportional, burning power only when active, do not require complex clock distribution, are robust to different forms of variability, and provide ease of composability for heterogeneous platforms. Networks-on-chip (NoCs) is an interconnect paradigm that has been introduced to deal with the ever-increasing system complexity. NoCs provide a distributed, scalable, and efficient interconnect solution for today’s many-core systems. Moreover, NoCs are a natural match with asynchronous design techniques, as they separate communication infrastructure and timing from the computational elements. To this end, globally-asynchronous locally-synchronous (GALS) systems that interconnect multiple processing cores, operating at different clock speeds, using an asynchronous NoC, have gained significant interest. While asynchronous NoCs have several advantages, they also face a key challenge of supporting new types of traffic patterns. Once such pattern is multicast communication, where a source sends packets to arbitrary number of destinations. Multicast is not only common in parallel computing, such as for cache coherency, but also for emerging areas such as neuromorphic computing. This important capability has been largely missing from asynchronous NoCs. This thesis introduces several efficient multicast solutions for these interconnects. In particular, techniques, and network architectures are introduced to support high-performance and low-power multicast. Two leading network topologies are the focus: a variant mesh-of-trees (MoT) and a 2D mesh. In addition, for a more realistic implementation and analysis, as well as significantly advancing the field of asynchronous NoCs, this thesis also targets synthesis of these NoCs on commercial FPGAs. While there has been significant advances in FPGA technologies, there has been only limited research on implementing asynchronous NoCs on FPGAs. To this end, a systematic computeraided design (CAD) methodology has been introduced to efficiently and safely map asynchronous NoCs on FPGAs. Overall, this thesis makes the following three contributions. The first contribution is a multicast solution for a variant MoT network topology. This topology consists of simple low-radix switches, and has been used in high-performance computing platforms. A novel local speculation technique is introduced, where a subset of the network’s switches are speculative that always broadcast every packet. These switches are very simple and have high performance. Speculative switches are surrounded by non-speculative ones that route packets based on their destinations and also throttle any redundant copies created by the former. This hybrid network architecture achieved significant performance and power benefits over other multicast approaches. The second contribution is a multicast solution for a 2D-mesh topology, which is more complex with higher-radix switches and also is more commonly used. A novel continuous-time replication strategy is introduced to optimize the critical multi-way forking operation of a multicast transmission. In this technique, a multicast packet is first stored in an input port of a switch, from where it is sent through distinct output ports towards different destinations concurrently, at each output’s own rate and in continuous time. This strategy is shown to have significant latency and energy benefits over an approach that performs multicast using multiple distinct serial unicasts to each destination. Finally, a systematic CAD methodology is introduced to synthesize asynchronous NoCs on commercial FPGAs. A two-fold goal is targeted: correctness and high performance. For ease of implementation, only existing FPGA synthesis tools are used. Moreover, since asynchronous NoCs involve special asynchronous components, a comprehensive guide is introduced to map these elements correctly and efficiently. Two asynchronous NoC switches are synthesized using the proposed approach on a leading Xilinx FPGA in 28 nm: one that only handles unicast, and the other that also supports multicast. Both showed significant energy benefits with some performance gains over a state-of-the-art synchronous switch

Researching methods for efficient hardware specification, design and implementation of a next generation communication architecture

The objective of this work is to create and implement a System Area Network (SAN) architecture called EXTOLL embedded in the current world of systems, software and standards based on the experiences obtained during the ATOLL project development and test. The topics of this work also cover system design methodology and educational issues in order to provide appropriate human resources and work premises. The scope of this work in the EXTOLL SAN project was: • the Xbar architecture and routing (multi-layer routing, virtual channels and their arbitration, routing formats, dead lock aviodance, debug features, automation of reuse) • the on-chip module communication architecture and parts of the host communication • the network processor architecture and integration • the development of the design methodology and the creation of the design flow • the team education and work structure. In order to successfully leverage student know-how and work flow methodology for this research project the SEED curricula changes has been governed by the Hochschul Didaktik Zentrum resulting in a certificate for "Hochschuldidaktik" and excellence in university education. The complexity of the target system required new approaches in concurrent Hardware/Software codesign. The concept of virtual hardware prototypes has been established and excessively used during design space exploration and software interface design

Research routing and MAC based on LEACH and S-MAC for energy efficiency and QoS in wireless sensor network

The wireless sensor is a micro-embedded device with weak data processing capability and small storage space. These nodes need to complete complex jobs, including data monitoring, acquisition and conversion, and data processing. Energy efficiency should be considered as one of the important aspects of the Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) throughout architecture and protocol design. At the same time, supporting Quality of Service (QoS) in WSNs is a research field, because the time-sensitive and important information is expected for the transmitting to to the sink node immediately. The thesis is supported by the projects entitled “The information and control system for preventing forest fires”, and “The Erhai information management system”, funded by the Chinese Government. Energy consumption and QoS are two main objectives of the projects. The thesis discusses the two aspects in route and Media Access Control (MAC). For energy efficiency, the research is based on Low Energy Adaptive Clustering Hierarchy (LEACH) protocol. LEACH is a benchmark clustering routing protocol which imposes upon cluster heads to complete a lot of aggregation and relay of messages to the base-station. However, there are limitations in LEACH. LEACH does not suit a wide area in clustering strategy and multi-hop routing. Moreover, routing protocols only focus on one factor, combining the clustering strategy and multi-hop routing mechanism were not considered in routing protocol for performance of network. QoS is supported by the MAC and routing protocol. Sensor MAC(S-MAC) makes the use of the periodically monitoring / sleeping mechanism, as well as collision and crosstalk avoidance mechanism. The mechanism reduces energy costs. Meanwhile, it supports good scalability and avoids the collision. However, the protocols do not take the differentiated services. For supporting QoS,A new route protocol needs to be designed and realized on embed platforms, which has WIFI mode and a Linux operation system to apply on the actual system. This research project was conducted as following the steps: A new protocol called RBLEACH is proposed to solve cluster on a widely scale based on LEACH. The area is divided into a few areas, where LEACH is improved to alter the selecting function in each area. RBLEACH creates routes selected by using a new algorithm to optimize the performance of the network. A new clustering method that has been developed to use several factors is PS-ACO-LEACH. The factors include the residual energy of the cluster head and Euclidean distances between cluster members and a cluster head. It can optimally solve fitness function and maintain a load balance in between the cluster head nodes, a cluster head and the base station. Based on the “Ant Colony” algorithm and transition of probability, a new routing protocol was created by “Pheromone” to find the optimal path of cluster heads to the base station. This protocol can reduce energy consumption of cluster heads and unbalanced energy consumption. Simulations prove that the improved protocol can enhance the performance of the network, including lifetime and energy conservation. Additionally, Multi Index Adaptive Routing Algorithm (MIA-QR) was designed based on network delay, packet loss rate and signal strength for QoS. The protocol is achieved by VC on an embedded Linux system. The MIA-QR is tested and verified by experiment and the protocol is to support QoS. Finally, an improved protocol (SMAC -SD) for wireless sensor networks is proposed, in order to solve the problem of S-MAC protocol that consider either service differentiation or ensure quality of service. According to service differentiation, SMAC-SD adopts an access mechanism based on different priorities including the adjustment of priority mechanisms of channel access probability, channel multi-request mechanisms and the configuring of waiting queues with different priorities and RTS backoff for different service, which makes the important service receive high channel access probability, ensuring the transmission quality of the important service. The simulation results show that the improved protocol is able to gain amount of important service and shortens the delay at the same time. Meanwhile, it improves the performance of the network effectivel

Towards Computational Efficiency of Next Generation Multimedia Systems

To address throughput demands of complex applications (like Multimedia), a next-generation system designer needs to co-design and co-optimize the hardware and software layers. Hardware/software knobs must be tuned in synergy to increase the throughput efficiency. This thesis provides such algorithmic and architectural solutions, while considering the new technology challenges (power-cap and memory aging). The goal is to maximize the throughput efficiency, under timing- and hardware-constraints